System setup and notes
We used IOMeter version 2006.07.27 over SMB shares and equipped the N7700 with seven 500GB Seagate ST3500320AS drives configured to operate at 3Gbps.
The N7700's performance is tested in three states - a seven-disk RAID-5 array, a degraded array when one hard disk is pulled from the system, and during the rebuild process after a disk is reinserted.
Setup
The host machine for IOMeter was as follows:
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (3.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB) |
| Motherboard | eVGA CK132-NF79 (NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset) - nForce 15.23 |
| Memory | 2GB (2x 1GB) Corsair XMS3 PC8500 |
| Disks | Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) |
| Graphics | Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 512MB - CATALYST 8.6 |
| Network | NVIDIA network controller, 1Gbps, 9000byte frames |
| OS | Microsoft Windows XP SP3 (x64) |
Below is our IOMeter test regime:
| Option/test | Configuration |
|---|---|
| Outstanding I/Os | 10 |
| Individual test run time | 30 seconds |
| Test file | 1GB |
| Sequential read test access spec | 64KB transfers 100% sequential 100% read |
| Sequential write test access spec | 64KB transfers 100% sequential 100% write |
| Random read and write access spec | 64KB transfers 100% random 50% write, 50% read |
| 1MB Sequential read test access spec | 1MB transfers 100% sequential 100% read |
Notes
Our N7700 featured firmware version 2.01.06. Creating the seven-disk RAID-5 array from scratch took us around the four-hour mark, and we found rebuilding to be pretty quick at around two-and-a-half hours.
The default stripe size of 64KB was used as this corresponds with the file block size in many of the Intel IOMeter tests and should, therefore, deliver the best possible performance. Furthermore, link aggregation was set to load-balance in order to deliver the best network performance.
For comparison's sake, we'll also be throwing in performance results for QNAP's TS-509 Pro. Please be aware, however, that this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison and the five-bay QNAP solution is included solely as a yardstick reference.
